Everyone keeps reminding me you can't be a journeyman if'n you don't journey. That being, you got to work for different masters so you can learn the different work they do and the different ways they do it. Thing is, there's only so many masters in the stable-keeper's guild. The North ain't that big a place, really, leastwise the tolerably civilized part of it. Only reason it's big enough for a guild at all is on account of how Bree, being at the crossroads, is a place of trade, and trade means travel, and travel means horses. But even so, you can't be in the Bree-land area working for stable-keepers, and needing to keep working for different ones, without your path leading you back to Bree.
Been about two years I been avoiding Bree. At first it was on account of how it reminded me of hurtful times. Them dark days after I come back from visiting the Mark, having chosen to give up any chance to ever return to those lands and my family and people, on account I had a life up north to return to… only to find I didn't after all. The girl I were promised to had moved away sudden-like on account of some family business I never found out what it were. Most of them folks as I had called friends either had left too, or had turned cold to me, or both. One of them even turned up to be missing and later were found dead, though I didn't find that out for a long while. And I'd been run out of the work I'd had in Hookworth, which brung me to my first journey to study under Éogar at Hengstacer farms, only to find no matter how hard I tried, I were just too daft to learn the ways of horse-breeding. There were nothing but to keep my gloom to my own self and keep on working hard enough to not got to remember things. And that's why I kept away from Bree. The sight of people, and the reminders of places where I'd met them, come to be friends with them, fell in love and made promises I could no longer keep… Even Butterbur's best beer weren't worth that. And later, when the hurts had become dull and distant, I avoided Bree mostly out of habit.
After I couldn't learn no more from Éogar, not that I'd learned much, he pushed me to move on. Can't be a journeyman if'n you don't journey. He told me I could keep on long as I like, sure, and a journeyman makes a decent living, though he didn't think as I should. I were sore tempted to stay, though, to give up trying for to become a master. The main reason to push on to be a master of the guild is to be able to provide for a wife and children, to keep a family and give them the best, and that weren't going to happen. But Éogar, he thought it'd be a waste of me, to be little more'n a stableboy, and he nagged and nagged at me. In particular, he called in a favor he were owed by Master Shelton, the stable-keeper of Trestlebridge, and I finally gave in after a year at Hengstacer and moved on up the Greenway.
Master Shelton's stable ain't too busy and truth is he didn't need a journeyman, just like he said. At first he didn't much teach me nor give me nothing for to do. Later, when he saw I were listless and wanted to work, as I needed something for to keep me from brooding on the hurts and loneliness, he let me do most of his work. But in time he felt bad about paying me a meager journeyman's wages while I more or less ran his stable for him, and like Éogar, he felt like I ought to be working toward becoming a master. So he found things to teach me, and after a year, he, too, started to push me to move on to someone else when there were nothing more as he could teach me.
Trouble is there weren't really no one else to work for except in Bree, or so near to't as to be practically in it, like in Combe. Now, Master Goldenleaf, what owns the stable at the southern gate, would never consider taking me on. He's the sort who don't trust anyone what's not from Bree. Even Combe he looks on a bit suspicious-like. And me, a fellow from far in the South… if that weren't bad enough, there's also me having been apprentice for so short a time, so late in life, and worse yet, to another from the South, not a proper Breeish stable-keeper. Were it up to him I'd not even be in the guild. But Master Rosewood, what owns the stable at the west gate, were eager to meet me, after hearing the recommendations from both Éogar and Master Shelton. Eager to take me on and to teach me, eager to see me become a master of the guild in another year or two.
So here I am now, back in Bree. I found a couple of rooms up on the Windview Estate, little more'n a potting shed someone converted more years back than any can count into a small home for someone what worked there that don’t no more so's they rent it out now. And Master Rosewood is most keen to teach me; for one, he got some kind of ledger thing as he does, so's he wants me to practice my letters so's I can learn it and help him manage it.
Sometimes all them hurts of being alone, the folks I knew what moved on or came cold to me or died, sometimes it still hurts like a dull sore spot, the way an old wound what's healed can still throb when the weather's poor. But what I'm finding is all those hurts, though they're not gone, they're so far away now that I can forget them, even in Bree, even when I'm looking at places where I walked with her, where I laughed with them. My first evening out by the Pony were pleasant and the people in the market were friendly, even if most of them didn't remember me. Maybe because most of them didn't remember me. After getting myself settled in those small rooms, I went to the Pony, or at least outside it, and met a sweet and friendly Bree-lass who was gracious and welcoming, and we talked for some while, about how Bree was faring, and the weather, and the harvest festival to come, and our favorite things to drink, and such-like. And a bit about the hurts we've both had, the people we've both lost, but more'n that, about the hope of new starts, about keeping the past in the past. Maybe if'n I can do that I can make Bree feel like a home again. I hope so, on account I don't got any other I can go back to.
